It isn't often in the Internet recruiting and job board news pond that I see something really special. But today, I just listened to something brilliant. Chris Russell founder of JobBoarders.com published a podcast titled Job-search Roundup...  honestly, I expected to listen to a minute of it just to see what he was up to.

Internet Brands Inc. (NASDAQ:INET) based in Los Angeles, California recently announced its expansion into careers with the acquisition of 10 niche career sites with an emphasis on community and social networking. The company's consumer Internet division now operates in five verticals, including auto, careers, home, shopping, and travel and leisure.

The company seems to have a well-thought-out strategy of focusing on employment niches that 

1. Offer unique value

Choose a niche that is poorly served that you can dominate very quickly.  Bells and whistles do not qualify on their own unless you are planning to spend tens of millions of dollars at a very minimum. 

2.  The right domain

Does it contain your keywords? Is it short, easy to pronounce, spell and remember? The right domain puts the wind at your back where you want it.

3.  Create more value than you capture

Years ago, I got very excited about networking and we filed for a patent that described a 'brilliant' way of integrating social networking into a job board. But when we started implementing the idea that I had, it went nowhere and I became disillusioned.  Recently new software platforms have proven that the networking idea was not at fault, rather it was our implementation that was to blame. 

As little as six months ago I thought that social networking was a bubble about to pop...  now I think it is more like an earthquake for the recruiting world.  One of the websites that convinced me is Chris Russell's Jobboarders.com.

And yet, it will still take years for a lot of really viable niche sites to emerge.   Yes, these sites can grow very quickly, however, a social networking site needs much higher traffic than a job board does to become a valuable recruiting tool.

Founded in 1998,  SalesTrax caught my attention with its December '07 announcement that job postings would henceforth be free -- unusual for a top-ranked job board.  You can find their job posting policies and pricing here. SalesTrax is based in the Kansas City area and offers "a comprehensive array of Internet services, nationwide career fairs, and direct placement services". 

I wanted to find out from Gary how offering free job postings has worked out and I think you will enjoy reading his story!

There was a time, believe it or not, when we thought LatPro might raise $10 million in venture capital and head for an IPO shortly thereafter, lol. Today, I don't envy the public companies and am glad we didn't raise the money.  Here is a list of those less fortunate job board companies who call themselves public corporations.

The last time I talked to my good friend Rick Myers over at TalentZoo.com he mentioned that it would be fun to hear more about the obstacles we have faced (without giving the impression that we are losers, lol). So here we go.

"Enterprise" class my ***!
Outsource every #!@*&% thing you can...

In some previous posts I have mentioned that we have been plagued by some technology problems this year.  One of the things 'driving' us crazy have been Seagate hard drive failures - but not their "enterprise" class drives which seem to have higher initial failure rates according to user reviews.

So, who isn't launching a niche job board these days?

I have been talking about growing competition in the job board marketplace for a long time... if you read my review of the job board industry, you found the list of niche job boards launched or acquired by monster and careerbuilder even before CB announced WorkinRetail.com. There are other sites there that remain anonymous and unannounced.

Job board experts agree that running a job board is getting more difficult as time goes by -- but launching a board is easier than ever. In a couple of hours, without even pulling out your credit card you can create a reasonably functional and good-looking website with today's social networking tools or blog software.

How times have changed... To start LatPro in 1997, I learned to program in Visual Basic and wrote all the code myself for a little more than two years. That code was all replaced in 2000 and today comprises 162,000 lines of java code, 310,000 lines of PHP code and 43,000 lines of html. Much of it will get replaced again. At LatPro, we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on our software and infrastructure.